LSP member Prof. Margaret Vandiver is hoping to make some progress on LSP research this summer and would welcome help from anyone who has the time and the interest! Here’s what she's hoping to work on:

One by one, dozens of people — black, white, young and old, a descendant of slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest and descendants of slaves — spoke out against the monuments, namely those of Forrest and the singular Confederate States president Jefferson Davis, that sit in city parks.

Roughly 50 more Memphians followed last night at Bruce Elementary School, in the first public meeting of Memphians for Removal of Confederate Monuments, speaking in favor of removing Memphis monuments to former Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. They spoke beneath a pre-existing, hand-colored banner proclaiming “We Are Conquerors,” an apparently unconnected piece of school paraphernalia. Perhaps it will prove prophetic.

“We took it to heart. On the 100th year (of Ell Persons’ lynching), we could do something major and involve the whole community in another way…so we started working,” said Pan Awsumb, volunteer with the Lynching Sites Project.

On Sunday afternoon, in a field between the Wolf River and a miniature golf course, several hundred people met under a tent. From a stage brimming with Memphis interfaith leaders, musicians and high school students organized by the Lynching Sites Project, words affirming the purpose for gathering were spoken: Prayer, repentance and healing from the events that happened 100 years ago on the same land.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (localmemphis.com) - Exactly one century ago, Michelle Lisa Whitney's great uncle - Ell Persons - died a brutal death, as a large crowd gathered to watch a white mob burn the woodcutter alive, decapitate, and dismember him near the Wolf River in what today is northeast Memphis.

On the surface, there appeared to be little common ground and little to celebrate.

A 16-year-old white girl, murdered while bicycling across a bridge on her way to school, and a black woodcutter who lived nearby burned alive for the crime. Two tragedies, no legal resolution to either.

And yet, not one but two gatherings Sunday afternoon found joy in loss, hope in injustice.

The interfaith prayer ceremony Sunday, May 21, marking the centennial of the lynching of Ell Persons included several mentions of the removal of Confederate monuments in the last month in New Orleans.

But during the two-hour ceremony in a field off Summer Avenue near the lynching site there were no overt calls for the city of Memphis to take the same approach of removing such monuments without advance notice.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis called the actions in New Orleans “commendable.”

He was burned alive while at least 5,000 spectators stood by watching near the Wolf River.

On the day of his death, The Commercial Appeal published a headline alerting the public of the intended lynching. After being burned to death, parts of his charred, dismembered body were taken to Beale Street and thrown at black pedestrians.

His name was Ell Persons; and though his murder made national headlines on May 22, 1917, it was quickly forgotten and rarely mentioned.